Faculty and staff members at Virginia Tech balance family life and parenthood with their dedication to their jobs at the university. But the day care process, taking care of sick children and finding ways to uphold the commitment to a career can be difficult.
Perhaps the most difficult roadblock when address in finding child care is high demand. Waitlists have become a reality that many parents must face when it comes to enrolling their children in a day care center.
A JUGGLING ACT
The Work/Life Resource Center at Tech helps to meet these needs in many ways, by providing help finding child care options, professional advice on familial issues, support groups for newcomers on staff, work-life grants and community connections.
Tech also provides a day care through the Child Development Center in Learning and Research, run by Victoria Fu, a professor in human development. There are approximately 40 slots, all of which are reserved for children of faculty and staff as well as graduate students. However, would-be patrons still encounter long waiting lists and limited space.
To address the demand for day care, the center has changed its hours to accommodate the needs of Tech's staff. It is now open from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., Monday through Friday.
"The changeover from the university calendar from part-time to full-time is directly to address the needs of the faculty and staff," said Lynn Ann Wolf, curriculum coordinator and instructor at the center.
Fu added that the hours aid the university in retention and recruitment of quality staff members.
The center is nationally certified, holding it to more stringent standards of day care and research. For example, the center must have a high ratio of teachers to students, increasing the individual attention that each child receives. These standards of quality are what Fu believes faculty and staff are seeking in day care for their children.
"I think the most important aspect is having qualified teachers with educational background previous supervised experience," Fu said. "We see our teachers as teachers-researchers. When you look at child care from a national perspective it's about quality, affordability and compensation."
COLLABORATION
In addition to the opening and expansion of the Child Development Center, Tech is finding new and alternative ways to directly address the limited amount of day care available for its faculty and staff. The Work/Life Resource Center has recently secured a partnership with Rainbow Riders Child care, a nationally accredited day care center.
The arrangement, which was finalized in September 2008, asserts that Tech must give Rainbow Riders $100,000 every year for five years. This is in exchange for 60 percent of the slots at the new center Rainbow Riders is in the process of building. The money comes solely from private donations given to the university.
The Virginia Tech Corporate Research Center is also a part of this partnership. The center gives $20,000 and in turn receives 12 percent of the total available child care openings.
The new center, which should be completed in time for the fall 2009 semester, will accommodate approximately 246 children. This includes full-time preschool and infant care and before- and after-school care for children up to 12 years old. Sign-up for the waiting list has already begun, but parents will not know their status until February or March 2009.
"The partnership with Rainbow Riders has been in process for a number of years. This is a huge step that will certainly make things easier," said Cathy Jacobs, director of the Work/Life Resource Center. "To recruit these young workers with new expectations for what a university should provide, we must keep up with the latest available work-life resources and child care initiatives. We have to always keep up with our competition so that we can hire the best faculty we can."
Tuition at Rainbow Riders for full time day care ranges from $575 to $625 per month, with the most expensive and highest demanded care being for infants. This is because the adult-to-child ratio must be higher -- there must be one adult to every three infants.
"It's a clear step in the right direction; however, not everyone is not going to get in," Jacobs said.
Currently, Rainbow Riders has a waiting list of more than 900 names for full-time care and close to 100 in line for part-time care. The center is in the process of going through its waiting lists and contacting interested parties to see whether they are affiliated with Tech or the Corporate Research Center. It's also working with the Tech engineering department to create a comprehensive way of putting their information online.
Kristi Snyder, administrator of Rainbow Riders Child care Center, hopes that day care will change in the future as the community recognizes its importance. She sees partnerships with other businesses as the best way to maintain a well-funded, high-quality day care center.
"What we're seeing in the industry is a trend that programs are moving toward agreements and sponsorships," Snyder said. "Parents' tuition alone cannot keep the quality of care. We need to pay teachers a livable wage and keep quality of care high and tuition affordable. These partnerships are the only way to really sustain this. This may be local government, church groups or state government programs."
Snyder believes that the quantity and the quality of day care in the New River Valley area could be improved through these partnerships.
"Here, we don't have the quantity," Snyder said. "The problem is funding. Parents are struggling, and paying child care at $140 to $150 a week is very difficult for young families to afford. Cost is how we pay our staff and run a good program. The trend is to look at an outside partnership to help expand that quality and quantity."
The partnership with Tech is an example of the funding day care centers are seeking. Jacobs also sees this as a step in the right direction.
"I'm trying to communicate with people in the New River Valley community to make clear the importance to businesses of supporting child care," Jacobs said. "This partnership won't answer all the needs, so we need to work to continue to create high-quality child care. That's why we reach out to other businesses, we need to make this a community effort -- this takes a new way of thinking."
FINDING THE RIGHT HELP
Another problem Snyder sees is the increased difficulty in finding a well-qualified staff that meets standards at a nationally accredited center. These standards are often unable to be met by many day care centers.
"I hope we can recruit Virginia Tech and Radford grads who are interested and care about this kind of work," Snyder said. "It really takes special people."
Blacksburg Day Care Center is another facility hosting many Tech staff members' children.
"When you're looking for child care, you want to look for somewhere that is arranged by age group so activities are developmentally appropriate," said Tiffany O'Boyle, Blacksburg Day Care Center's administrator. "It is also important to look at each child on an individual basis."
Blacksburg Day Care Center is no exception to the problem of limited spots plaguing the area. Spots for infants are limited to between eight and 10, and O'Boyle said that many parents will sign up before conceiving to deal with the inevitability of waiting. But the concerns of child care at the university level are not limited to the Tech campus. Other colleges in Virginia have also struggled to find ways to aid their faculty and staff in finding child care.
The University of Virginia provides a similar program through its Child Development Center, while James Madison University also runs a Child Development Clinic through its psychology department.
In August, UVa began a program for backup child and elderly care. The program provides all benefit-eligible employees with guaranteed back-up child care from a trained and qualified professional for 10 days out of the year in the case of a breakdown in their normal child care arrangements.
And with the arrangements in place at Tech, many professors refuse to concede that their children could cause them to cancel a class, even if it were just one per semester.
HOW FAMILIES PLAN
Grace Kao, an assistant professor in religious studies at Tech, recently had her first child and came to face the challenge of finding day care for her son. He is now 11 months old and in full-time day care at Blacksburg Day Care Center.
"Fortunately, I have yet to cancel a class," Kao said. "When my son was out for a week, I did not have to cancel class because my husband took partial sick days. I could not get as much work done, but I did not have to miss classes."
Kao does plan on having more children while continuing her career. She tries to get her work done during the time her son is in day care, and also has had to prioritize her schedule. She and her husband work together to take care of their child when he cannot be in day care.
"My son is in day care almost every day of the week," Kao said. "I did everything during my pregnancy to help get him into day care. I got advice from friends, as well as Cathy Jacobs from the Work/Life Resource Center. I had to wait on about five or six waitlists before being able to enroll my son at Blacksburg Day Care Center."
Jeanine Eddleton, a chemistry instructor at Tech, feels she has struck an ideal balance in her career and family life. She has five children, including an eight-month-old, and children in the second, fifth, eighth, and 11th grades. She stresses that she could not keep up her job without the quality child care she has invested in.
"All of my kids went to day care from the time they were old enough," Eddleton said. "One thing that makes working with kids possible and to do a really good job is access to quality child care."
She manages to teach two large lecture sections and a lab, while also fulfilling general departmental duties. As an instructor, she does not have to meet the research requirements of a professor. She admits that if she were to participate in this kind of research, having five kids would be almost impossible.
Eddleton takes her classes seriously and hardly ever misses class because of a family problem such as a sick child. She credits her ability to do this to a large network of friends and family that help out if her kids need attention when she has to be at Tech.
"I kill myself not to cancel class because VT hires me to teach, and when it's 11:00, I am supposed to be in that classroom," Eddleton said. "I take that very seriously. This network of friends and colleagues is incredible, and of course if it's a day I'm not teaching, I would do the same for these people."
Most of Eddleton's children are in the public school system now, and she prides herself on being home every day after school to get them off the bus. Before they can enter public schooling, they have all been in day care.
"It is so important to know that your kids are safe, happy and surrounded by caring people," Eddleton said. "A huge amount of my salary goes to child care, but you get what you pay for. Maybe I don't have the biggest house or nicest car, but I have the highest quality child care I can get."
CHANGING GENDER ROLES
Working parents will always have to find ways to achieve this balance, thus causing demand to remain high. As younger people enter into the workforce, one of the most important aspects of choosing where to start a career is looking at the ways in which an institution can help meet their needs, such as child care.
"What a lot of this comes down to is that there are more and more women in the workforce," Jacobs said. "The university really wants to hire women, especially in fields that are historically male. Also, more men are beginning to care about child care. It's a real change that we've seen in the last 10 to 15 years."
The partnership with Rainbow Riders and the opening of the Child Development Center has eased the problem of finding day care for children, but has not eliminated this issue. Jacobs aims to help the community take more involvement in improving the quality and availability of child care.
Parents must still be prepared to sign up for waitlists and fill out applications during pregnancy. And while prospective mothers and fathers can "double-dip" their names on waitlists at multiple day care centers, it only furthers the demand in a supply-stricken region.